Around September 30, 1836

ohn Stapleton, an English attorney, handled the affairs of several Charleston properties included in the estate of Mrs. Hannah Bull. He managed the sale of her slaves, cattle, hogs, sheep and other effects of Mrs. Bull's properties after her death. In a letter to Higham, Fife & Co. dated May 20, 1836, Stapleton detailed the sale of several slaves and included the titles. As the attorney, the...

In May of 1836, a long simmering conflict between whites and Creek Indians in Alabama and Georgia finally erupted. President Jackson's destruction of the Bank of the United States had resulted in uncontrolled speculation, and frontier people were clamoring for more land. This was in spite of the 1832 Treaty of Cusseta, which stipulated that individual Creeks be given a parcel of 320 acres...

By the time the Millennial Harbinger hit the presses for its April 1836 issue, the movement begun by its editor, Alexander Campbell, had grown so substantially that it began to challenge other Christian denominations. D.S. Burnet, a writer for the Millennial Harbinger, exclaimed the growth of the restoration movement of primitive Christianity. He explained that ever since its founding,...

On February 22, 1832, toward the end of Andrew Jackson’s presidency a large celebration in his honor took place. The festivities of music and a parade drew in a crowd of 10,000 people; but the highlight of the ceremony was the four-foot-tall, two-foot thick, fourteen-hundred-pound wheel of cheddar cheese, with a belt around it bearing the inscription: “Our Union, It Must be Preserved.” Ben...

On February 28, 1837, almost a week before the inauguration of the new president Martin Van Buren, The Globe, a Washington D.C. newspaper, reflected upon the Presidency of Andrew Jackson and expressed the thanks of the nation for his service. The newspaper editors found a supreme example of gratitude in the people of Albemarle County who had recently appointed a committee to invite the...

When the mail arrived in Albemarle County on March 8, 1837, Thomas Jefferson Randolph may have been surprised to receive a letter from R. G. Nicholas informing him that he had been nominated and accepted as Com[missioner] for settling claims to reservations under the Choctaw Treaty. As a prominent gentleman from a well-established Virginian family, Randolph was a natural choice for the position...

The Alamo had fallen and Sam Houston decided that it was time. On March 11, 1836, Houston ordered Texas families to retreat across the Colorado River in order to escape the Mexican army. Dilue Harris, a young white girl, packed up her belongings and left her home with her family. They began to encounter trouble when they attempted to cross the Trinity River. The water level of the river and the...

Without question, higher education in the antebellum South was a luxury reserved primarily for the wealthy. Only the rich sent their children to college, and even among the upper-class, a college education was not a prerequisite for success. Many wealthy Southern families considered a college education to be an extravagance or even a threat to a social order where social class and racial superiority...

As Alexander Campbell promoted his restoration movement, one of his colleagues questioned him on the issue of baptism. In 1836, he entered into a debate with Dr. John Thomas in the Millennial Harbinger, Campbell's own religious journal. At first, their ideas corresponded well with one another, as they both required immersion to attain salvation. Their concurrence did not last long,...

Delegates from 57 Texas communities met at Washington-on-the-Brazos in March of 1836 to draft a declaration of independence from Mexico. This formal separation from the Mexican government came about five months after war broke out in October of 1835. The language of the document written by Tennessean George C. Childress reflected a growing concern over Santa Anna's centralistic, militaristic...